He grinned at that, relaxing a little.
“I don’t work for Heinlein, believe me. Second Chance is about just that: a second chance.”
“So the bums you recruit end up second tier?”
“Homeless,” he said, “and some of them do, yes. I get them as far as I can—clean them up, get them blood tested, and get them basic inoculations.”
“You pay for that?”
“We run a series of free clinics throughout the city. It’s paid for by donations and fund-raisers.”
“How many clinics?”
“Three, on record.”
“On record?”
He seemed to think maybe he said something he shouldn’t have. “The point is, we don’t make anyone get wired. That’s a decision they have to make on their own.”
“What about scar-face, the guy I saw you with at the train station when I came in?”
“He …” The old guy drifted off. His eyes had started to look a little dopey.
“He what?”
Buckster shook his head. “He didn’t sign up.”
“No second chance for him, then, huh?”
“He’ll have his day,” Buckster said. There was something weird about the way he said it.
“What?”
He drained his glass, and gave a big shrug. “Every dog has his day, right, Corporal?”
“Sure.”
He got quiet for a minute. I grabbed the bottle from the table and filled his glass again.
“You worked with a lot of revivors over there, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You wired?”
“Fuck, no,” I said. “Why, are you?”
He nodded.
“You did your time,” I said. “You made first tier. Why the fuck would you go and do that?”
Buckster was looking at the flag hanging on the wall. He had a far-off look in his eye.
“Is that blood?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Yours?”
“No,” I said. “One of the girls from the Juba ghetto got grabbed as a hostage. Me and my team went in to take them out.”
“Your team of revivors?”
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“Five.”
“She live?”
“Yeah. After we took care of them, I found her in the cellar, naked and half starved. They’d …used her pretty rough, but she was in one piece.”
“And her captors?”
That mission was the first time, and last time, I’d let them eat. I was mad enough to do it, and I wanted to send a message. I wanted the other fuckers who used that camp to burn it down, and cross themselves when they drove by the ashes after what they saw there.
“We took care of them.”
He nodded, understanding. It actually felt good in a way to talk to the old man. He’d been there, so he knew.
He took another drink, and leaned back. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out, still looking at the flag.
“You don’t like revivors much, do you?” he asked.
“Not much.”
“But they were human once.”
“Were.”
“But they’re conscious. They have memories.”
“My TV has memory too.”
“Your TV was never alive,” he said.
“Look, Chief, lesson number one when dealing with those things is, don’t get confused about what they are. Trust me. Whatever they used to be isn’t what they are now. They’re weapons, and that’s all they are.”
“If you really believe what you say, then why not get wired for PS?”
“Because if someone gets their face chewed off, my dead ass ain’t gonna be the last thing they see.”
He drifted off for a minute. I hoped I didn’t give him one drop too many. I didn’t want him falling asleep on me.
“Revivors save lives sometimes,” he said.
“When they slagged the Congo, they said that saved lives too.”
He shrugged.
“They’re weapons, Chief. That’s what they are. They’re not soldiers. They’re weapons. Get it? They’re good at killing, eating, and soaking up bullets.”
“Say what you want about them. They can’t be corrupted.”
“Corrupted by who?”
“Anyone.”
His eyelids got heavy again. His eyes went back to stupid.
“They can’t be corrupted,” he said. “Just remember that.”
“I’ll do that.”
“They remember things.”
That got my attention a little. Revivors did remember things, sometimes a lot of things. If it got quiet enough and you talked to them long enough, they’d tell you the story of their lives. Alone in the field with them for months on end, they were like TVs or radios.
“What kinds of things?” I asked.
“Things they forgot.”
“Like what?”
“Things they were made to forget.”
That got my attention, a lot.
“What does that mean? ‘Made to forget’?”
He looked at me, his eyes trying to focus. They went from being out of it to being a little bit scared. Tears shone in those old eyes of his.
“They make us forget,” he said, his voice quiet.
“Forget what?” I asked, but his eyelids were coming down. His eyes still looked scared as they closed, and he eased back in the chair.
“Old man?”
His mouth opened a little, and he started to breathe deep and slow. He was out.
Damn it.
I took the glass from his hand before it fell and threw a blanket on him. Zombie was short-lived; he’d wake up in an hour or two and I’d send him home.
I leaned back on the couch and took another hit from the whiskey bottle, listening to the old guy snore. Wachalowski said the shit that happened before I left never stopped, and I knew now that someone had been messing with my head. Someone had been making me forget. That’s what Buckster meant. He knew something.
I called Wachalowski on the JZI, and he picked up like he was waiting for it.
I think I might have something for you, I said.
What?
I’ll send you the recording I took, but long story short, I think he’s mixed up in something just like you said. Don’t hold him, though.
Why not?
Because he’s looking for a friend, I said. Someone he can bring in, and he just found one.
What makes you think he’ll trust you enough to do that?
I watched him sleep. He was relaxed now and the fear was gone from his face, but I knew what he’d been trying to say, and I knew what scared him.
I just found out we have something in common.
Zoe Ott—La Madre Emergency Ward
I made one of the policemen tell me where they were taking Karen, but I didn’t know what to do. I froze up in the hallway. I stayed there until the sirens went away and people went back into their rooms. I never realized until then how attached to her I really was.
When I finally did move, I went out into the rain without even going back to my room. I got on the subway, soaked from head to toe, and sat there, numb, the whole way over. The emergency room was completely packed. Some looked sick, and some were bleeding. They looked like they’d been there a long time.
There was a big line to get to the front desk. I managed to make my way through the crowd and cut in front of the first person. He looked like a biker with big, tattooed arms.
“Hey!”
“I need to know where Karen Goncalves is,” I said. The woman behind the desk looked at me over her glasses.
“Ma’am, please step to the end of the line.”
“Yeah, end of the line, bitch,” the biker said.
“I’m not checking in. I just need to know where—”
“Ma’am, I cannot help you until you step to the end of the line and wait your turn like everyone else.”
I looked back at all the angry faces. The line went to the door, and that didn’t even count all the people in the waiting area. Half of them were standing because there was no place to sit.
“Bitch,” the biker guy said, “get to the end of the line before I—”